Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
But not everyone is ready to move on. Someone wants to trap the real killer and make the guilty pay. I am going to say something bold: I’ve failed at almost everything I’ve attempted in my life. At the very least, I’ve failed to do things the way I expected. In fact, I started writing this book after being crushed by my failure to achieve something I really wanted. This book was born out of failure. I think the fact that we can recognize a range of possibilities within ourselves and within one another is the reason we find storytelling so compelling. We want to trace the good in the people we might otherwise call bad, uncover the bad in the people who appear good. We’re all hungry to explore our complexities through book characters, so in that way, I do think they follow the same rules (the interesting ones, at least!). The license book characters have is they get to explore the outer limits of our good and bad tendencies, extremes most of us wouldn’t be able to get away with. So in that way, reading a book is like watching an experiment unfold: What could happen if I leaned into certain possibilities within myself?
When all your characters have secrets, how do you get to know them? Did you have their failures and alibis mapped out before you began writing, or did you figure out their roles as you went? The best thing I discovered in college was that I had access to free counseling. (This is true of grad school, too.) What a gift. Talking to someone else about how you’re feeling is healing. In My Dreams I Hold a Knife is Winstead’s debut book. She followed that with The Last Housewife (2022) It looks like she’s also publishing romance, including Fool Me Once (2022). I guess she likes balancing the light with the dark when it comes to writing.
More in Books
Solidly written fast-paced mystery! Definitely had shades of The Girls Are All So Nice Here with the reunion theme and something terrible happening while they were at school. I felt like this novel did more justice to the theme and kept me more intrigued and entertained.
Even though clearly, I’m capable of imagining those things! I guess my advice is to nurture the flame of your desire, tend to it daily, and become friends with it, so neither of you undermines the other. In My Dreams I Hold a Knife definitely offered more drama than plot. Or rather, the friend and relationship drama was the entire plot.
There’s a lot of darkness in this book. If you could shield a single character from the secrets and horror, who would it be? One minor quibble I had were the names. For heaven's sake, there are millions of choices for names out there, why oh why name characters with nearly the same names? Caro, Coop, Courtney, and even a Charlie has a role. But in a group of eight people who hang out, to have three of them with such similar names is dumb. Take pity on us poor readers who need to keep characters straight in our heads! But not everyone is ready to move on. Not everyone left Duquette ten years ago, and not everyone can let Heather’s murder go unsolved. Someone is determined to trap the real killer, to make the guilty pay. When the six friends are reunited, they will be forced to confront what happened that night–and the years’ worth of secrets each of them would do anything to keep hidden. In My Dreams I Hold a Knife is whatever you're looking for: a mystery, broken hearts, very deep secrets and unbearable truths. The thing about Jessica is, on one hand, she’s a privileged woman most people would look at and say, you have so much. You’re successful.
Great Deal 
New Comment